My best Vanilla-town character so far. Confession: I cheated. There is no way to cure mutations short of a !NewLife, which I'd have to scum the Black Market for, and I had a really nasty mutation set at one point, so I replaced the basic town layout with Zul in the edit files. Now I can cure mutations for $5K a pop. Of course, with chaos resistance, that doesn't matter anymore, but I didn't resist chaos until depth 60 or so.

I started as a human but got transformed into a Klackon by chaos, which was actually a welcome change since Klackons make better fighters. The speed bonus is nice too.

I have some painful resistance holes: light, dark, shards, and nexus. Come to think of it, a Ring of Light and Darkness Resistance would serve me better than my RoS+3 at this point --- home come I don't have one at home??

The Cloak "Faroth" is really nuts.

My gloves, body armor, rings, and shooter could all do with an upgrade. I was quite disappointed when Brand did not drop his crossbow. I would really like to find that or Crimson.

Just hunting uniques and hoping for good drops! I'm lacking speed right now --- +17 unhasted, or +10 if I want to cover all resists. (Light and Dark are open right now.)

On 6.11.2009 19:31 Djabanete wrote:I am *this close* to doing a massive equipment shuffle. There are lots of items I want to be able to use --- Fingolfin, Yata-no-Kagami, dual rings of speed +12 --- but that I can't use because it would mess up my resistances grid.

Well, here I am. Any advice from heng/entro players is more than welcome, but I suspect I'm already doing pretty much what I'm supposed to be doing. I dove from 80 to 98 quite fast because the drops get better (I hope) and the danger level is pretty similar --- except that I live in constant, abject fear of the Destroyer, the Norsa, Kronos, Morgoth, Tiamat, and anything else that can melee as well as I can in an anti-summoning corridor. Because if they can drive me out of my hidey-hole, I'm likely to spend the rest of my short life at low HP, teleporting from unsafe spot to another until I get toasted by some massive breath weapon. Seriously, is there any way to deal with some of these uniques without chugging *Healing* nonstop? I try to economize potions but I run out anyway.

On 6.11.2009 22:01 Djabanete wrote:This dump is without !Resistance because I ran out, but I don't go into the dungeon without them. I'm about to scum the BM.

On 10.11.2009 02:03 dzhang@its.caltech.edu wrote:Takes tons and tons (~300) !oCCW. Dig an anti-summon corridor. Fight the unique until you're at about 1/2 HP. ?oPhaseDoor, and then chug !oCCW. Hopefully you're near topped out when the monster gets to you. You can also Teleport, but then you need to teleport back when you're done healing up.

I finally, finally beat Entroband in Vanilla Town mode with a human warrior. (Yes, I started as a human.) It took two attempts before I could kill the Serpent; on the first, I hadn't yet killed some of the higher-level uniques, so the "summon special opponents" just wrecked me. After a couple weeks away from Entro, I came back and killed Morgoth, Nodens, and the Destroyer, and finally I was ready for the last battle.

Killing the Serpent was vastly more difficult than killing Morgoth in V, or perhaps my character was just weaker. I had to teleport a couple dozen times, and I went through quite a bit of every kind of healing potion --- about 50 CCW, 10 Healing, 10 *Healing*, and 4 Life (I think). Stormbringer's vampirism helped --- when I needed some health, I'd teleport, find some P's or Z's or D's, and kill them for life. NB: Next time, if there is a next time, I won't eat Elvish Waybread right before the last fight. Being gorged half the time really sucks. Also, I forgot to bring Mushrooms of Restoring, and had to chug Potions of Life whenever my DEX dropped too low.

I never did kill the Unicorn or the Chemist (although I did fight the former a couple of times before giving up), and I saw neither hide nor hair of Feanor or the Crossbow of Brand. But to my delight the Serpent did drop Ringil (everyone's all-time favorite, but mine especially because it's been the weapon of two favorite characters). If I were to keep playing, I'd use it, but since I'm retiring this character I thought the last dump should be taken with the winning equipment set, including the trusty Stormbringer which never let me down.

It's been fun and it's been frustrating, and it's time to take a nice, long break from *bands. Peace, and good luck to everyone!

~Djabanete

On 6.12.2009 03:08 HallucinationMushroom wrote:Yah! I've been waiting for this victory post. After some weeks went by I was afraid something bad had happened. Good job rippin' the wig!